By: Roger Srivasan
A persistent myth continues to circulate in public discourse: that a sitting president enjoys absolute immunity from arrest or prosecution, guaranteed by the United Nations and insulated by the sacred principle of state sovereignty. It is an attractive fiction—simple, reassuring, and profoundly misleading. In reality, presidential immunity is neither absolute nor moral, and sovereignty has never been intended as a sanctuary for impunity.
The confusion begins with a fundamental misunderstanding of international law. The United Nations does not “grant” immunity to heads of state. No UN charter, resolution, or convention confers blanket protection on presidents simply by virtue of office. What exists instead is a body of customary international law, developed to facilitate diplomacy and ensure the orderly conduct of relations between states—not to shield leaders from accountability for grave wrongdoing.
International law recognises two forms of immunity. The first, immunity ratione personae, is personal and temporary. It protects certain senior office-holders—such as heads of state and government—from the jurisdiction of foreign domestic courts while they are in office. The second, immunity ratione materiae, attaches to official acts performed in an official capacity and may persist after a leader leaves office. Crucially, neither form was ever intended to be limitless.
Immunity is procedural, not moral. It delays prosecution; it does not extinguish culpability. Its purpose is pragmatic: to prevent diplomatic paralysis, retaliatory prosecutions, and the weaponisation of courts for political vendettas. It was never designed as a cloak behind which presidents could enable atrocities, orchestrate transnational criminal networks, or preside over the systematic corrosion of neighbouring states.
This distinction becomes decisive when conduct crosses a certain threshold. International crimes—genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and serious transnational offences—pierce the veil of office. When a head of state knowingly facilitates large-scale criminality that spills beyond his borders, sovereignty ceases to function as a protective doctrine and begins to resemble a legal fiction maintained for convenience.
The post-war evolution of international law reflects this reality. The establishment of the International Criminal Court rests on a simple but revolutionary principle: no office, however exalted, places an individual above international criminal law. While jurisdictional limits and political constraints remain, the normative position is now settled. Accountability may be delayed; it is no longer denied.
History, moreover, has been an unsentimental tutor. Augusto Pinochet, once presumed untouchable, was arrested abroad despite his former status as head of state. Slobodan Milošević was transferred to international justice within years of wielding sovereign power. Manuel Noriega, a sitting leader at the time of his indictment, was prosecuted for narcotics trafficking. These cases differ in context and outcome, but they converge on a single point: sovereignty does not confer permanent legal invisibility.
It is here that intellectual discipline matters. To acknowledge the limits of immunity is not to endorse vigilantism, unilateral military incursions, or the theatrical abduction of leaders by foreign powers. International law does not legitimise lawlessness in the name of justice. Accountability must be pursued through lawful mechanisms: international courts, multilateral pressure, extradition processes, and collective diplomatic action. The rejection of impunity does not require the abandonment of order.
Yet it would be equally dishonest to pretend that sovereignty is inviolable when used as a weapon against the international community. A state that knowingly allows its territory, institutions, or leadership to become conduits for transnational criminal harm forfeits the moral force of its sovereignty claim. Sovereignty entails responsibility. When that responsibility is wilfully breached, the international system is not obliged to avert its gaze.
The insistence on “UN-guaranteed immunity” is therefore less a legal argument than a rhetorical refuge. It appeals to the language of law while hollowing out its substance. Worse still, it invites a dangerous inversion: that the very principles designed to preserve international order should be repurposed to protect those who undermine it.
Presidential office was conceived to serve the state, not to sanctify the individual. Immunity was crafted to protect diplomacy, not criminality. And sovereignty, though foundational to international relations, was never meant to function as an alibi.
The lesson, stated plainly, is neither radical nor vindictive. Power is not a pardon. Office is not absolution. And in a world increasingly shaped by transnational harm, the law cannot afford to confuse restraint with surrender.
